Read Online Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... by Stevie Phillips - Free Book Online

throat was closing with the fear of it, and I was positive no sound would come out.
    *   *   *
    Thousands of miles traveled had brought me to that moment. Many of them traversed over well-paved roads. Boring rides in limousines. Overheated or freezing limos. On the way to airports, from airports to hotels, from hotels to gigs, from gigs to restaurants—or wherever else we went at two in the morning—from “wherevers” back to hotels, and finally back to airports. Those rides became too tedious to endure—except for the day in which her hand began a trip from my knee, where she had placed it when the car lurched, to my crotch. As it slowly crept no more than an inch every two or three minutes, I started to panic. Her move wasn’t inadvertent. Judy did nothing inadvertently. Like Alice, I grew smaller and smaller as I shrank into the upholstered corner on my side of the car. Her arm, however, grew longer and longer as it stretched across the length of the backseat.
    Omigod! What am I going to do? It was, for me, a close encounter of the unwanted kind. In an instant my body turned rigid, and I stopped breathing while every possible weak-kneed simpering response like, I don’t think so. Please! Not my thing. I wish you wouldn’t collided in my head. I rejected them all. Breathe, Stevie. Dare I look at her? I mustered all the courage I had and turned in her direction. I hesitate to recall the pained expression I must have worn. Take another breath and say something, I commanded myself. Nothing would come out. Her hand was now fully in my crotch, and she was staring straight ahead. Then she turned and smiled. What did it mean? Why was I even thinking about that? What should I do? The idea of being intimate with Judy revolted me. I wanted to reject her. And it wasn’t just because she was a woman, although a relationship with another woman did not interest me. It was because I didn’t like her. That was the biggest Oh no!
    In that minute I knew, as surely as I knew my name, that I no longer liked her and I could admit it to myself. I loved her talent, but I didn’t like her. The pass might not have been as distasteful if it had come from someone else. Beyond that, there was that other big Oh no! She was the great Judy Garland, and I was her assistant cum roadie cum wet nurse cum all other things menial. I was scared. Will I lose my job if I take her hand away? Will I offend her? These insipid questions were exploding in my head. Breathe, Stevie.
    And then suddenly it didn’t matter. If I lost my job, so be it. It all happened in that moment. I took another deep breath, and then I took her hand and put it back in her lap. I looked at her and smiled. And when I did, I understood that I had the courage of my conviction. After that I would never doubt it again. She smiled back, and we both moved on. It was another step forward in my real education, but I’m grateful that I was not tested again. She kept her hands to herself after that.
    Having car sex with Judy Garland was in no way the right answer to alleviating boredom, but after a while one simply had to do something. I was drowning in my own miserable small talk. “Tell me what it was like working with Gene Kelly in The Pirate ,” and then there would be little snatches of fun when she talked about working with Mickey, Fred, and Gene. But I was not knowledgeable enough, or insider enough, to discuss the great professionals like the producer Arthur Freed and the other creative geniuses that she had worked with, like the composer Roger Edens and the choreographer Busby Berkeley.
    In these countless car rides I went with her through every movie she’d ever done, patting myself on the back each time I remembered some silly casting detail, while unintentionally boring her to death. And when she was bored she was nasty. I was predictable in my style, formulaic in my conversation, and, with Judy, limited